Day 4 to 6 - Not so successfully balancing the Nutrisystem diet with everyday dining

On Monday, I started the remainder week of trying to figure out how to balance Nutrisystem with my regular life. For breakfast, I started out with Maple Walnut Oatmeal for breakfast. It worked the same way as the instant oatmeal you'd find in the supermarket (just add hot water), but the oats did seem a different texture than the instant oatmeal. It also wasn't as sweet, which actually made it taste better.

For lunch, I took my two wonderful co-workers out to lunch. One ordered ribs, while the other ordered a steak. I ordered a veggie burger. It was a delicious veggie burger though :) But after lunch, I took them to McDonalds for some ice cream, and of course, I had to have some myself. too.

For dinner that night were Tacos. This was also from the "just add water" school. I was a little taken aback when I was told to open a package of dust and to add water.

But this is another case of having to throw your doubts to the wind. After thoroughly mixing up the mixture, I microwaved it and put it on the small taco shells Nutrisystem provided.

Believe it or not, it didn't taste bad. Again, it wasn't Wolfgang Puck's, but it was definitely not unpleasant to eat. The beef and the contents of the taco were all dehydrated, and adding water brought it all back. The beef was surprisingly still pretty beefy.

For dessert that night I had BBQ Soy Chips and water.

The next day is when I really fell off the wagon. I flew to Tampa for a day trip, and my hosts treated me to a LOT of food. I'm talking a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny's, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and McDonalds for dinner. Pretty much the exact opposite of the Nutrisystem diet.

The next morning and afternoon, I flew back to New York, and I reverted to bad habits. I didn't eat breakfast, and for lunch I had about the worst thing you could have: a bag of chips, a granola bar and a soda.

Not surprisingly, when I weighed in today, I had put back on 1.1 pounds. I'm actually amazed it wasn't more. As disappointing as this setback was, one good thing is that it felt...weird to be reverting to bad habits. I recognized that I was eating larger-than-normal portions, I realized that I was not eating regular meals, and I recognized when my food (like the chips and soda) were chock-full of BAD carbs. As I continue the diet (the way it's supposed to be done), I'm sure these things will be more and more foreign to me.

I jumped back on the wagon for dinner. I had a Nutrisystem BBQ Sauce Over Beef, Beans, and Rice (another regular, non-frozen entree). I see a trend among these non-frozen Nutrisystem dinners--they're all not the most appetizing things to look at (especially out of the package), but they are surprisingly good tasting as long as you go in with no expectations. In this case, the barbeque sauce was tangy and pretty good tasting, the beef was tender, and the rice had soaked in another of the sauce to be really quite tasty.


I'm down to my last orange and grapes in the fridge, so I am due for a run to the market to get more vegetables and fruit. As for taking off that 1.1 pounds, I will be spending extra time on the Wii tonight.